Agamemnon (1585-1617)

and his own brother. And when he had come back as a suppliant to his hearth, unhappy Thyestes secured such safety for his lot as not himself to suffer death and stain with his blood his native soil.

But Atreus, the godless father of this slain man, with welcome more hearty than kind, on the pretence that he was cheerfully celebrating a happy day by serving meat, served up to my father as entertainment a banquet of his own children’s flesh.

The toes and fingers he broke off ⋯ sitting apart.[*]And when all unwittingly my father had quickly taken servings that he did not recognize, he ate a meal which, as you see, has proved fatal to his race. Now, discovering his unhallowed deed, he uttered a great cry, reeled back, vomiting forth the slaughtered flesh, and invoked

an unbearable curse upon the line of Pelops, kicking the banquet table to aid his curse, thus perish all the race of Pleisthenes! This is the reason that you see this man fallen here. I am he who planned this murder and with justice. For together with my hapless father he drove me out,

me his third child, as yet a baby in swaddling-clothes. But grown to manhood, justice has brought me back again. Exile though I was, I laid my hand upon my enemy, compassing every device of cunning to his ruin.

So even death would be sweet to me now that I behold him in justice’s net.

Aegisthus, excessive triumph amid distress I do not honor. You say that of your own intent you slew this man and did alone plot this pitiful murder.

I tell you in the hour of justice that you yourself, be sure of that, will not escape the people’s curses and death by stoning at their hand.

You speak like that, you who sit at the lower oar when those upon the higher bench control the ship?[*]Old as you are, you shall learn how bitter it is